3 Lessons We’re Learning From Venezuela’s Collapse

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

Some ideas have long records of complete failure, yet people try them again and again. Venezuela’s meltdown has two of these ideas that have never ended well, but people keep trying them.

First, Socialism never works. From Korea, Russia, Africa, to Latin America, it has never worked. But people keep wanting it. Venezuela has had a bad decade with their socialist experiment and within the last year the final domino has fallen. Their economy is in meltdown. When the price of oil plummeted, Venezuela could no longer afford their socialist programs and the state-controlled industries failed.

The second bad idea is an economic “solution” that has always failed: Venezuela kept printing money so they could pay for everything their socialist experiment demanded. Of course, Venezuela went the way of every other country that has tried devaluing their currency—hyperinflation has completely wrecked the economy. Venezuela’s currency inflated so fast that they couldn’t afford to buy more paper and ink to print more.

Socialism and hyper-inflation may not be immediate threats to us. But we can look at the meltdown in Venezuela to see how an economic collapse could play out, if, no matter the cause, it did happen here.

1. The Government Makes A Lot Of Mistakes

The markets and the economy work best when they are not interfered with by the government. But we elect officials expecting them to do something. When there is economic turmoil, don’t expect your elected officials to just sit in their offices. President Herbert Hoover tried letting the markets work themselves out during the Great Depression and everyone hated him for it. President Roosevelt is still praised with saving us all from the Depression despite the research that says his worker programs actually prolonged the Great Depression. Had Hoover had his way of non-intervening in the markets, the recovery could have happened much sooner.

The government in Venezuela solves all their problems backwards. No money? Print more. Now they don’t even count money, they weigh it by the kilo. Bread lines stretching for a mile? Make standing in line illegal. No more bread lines. Prices of goods double every other day. Make a law freezing all prices, but keep printing money. So, just because the government says a loaf of bread can only cost 100 bolivars, it doesn’t mean anything when everyone’s millionaires from all the inflation.

Any economic disaster we may experience you can expect our elected officials to go head over heels trying to be the next Roosevelt. Anyone remember the bank bailout? Or the current rounds of Quantitative Easing? Or negative interest rates? The government is helping the economy to death.

If another housing bubble bursts, or car loan bubble, or tuition bubble, or healthcare bubble, or if the Fed stops keeping interest rates at a frightening low level, we can expect large disturbances in the markets. But corrections are a good thing, until someone says, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

2. Hungry People Will Do Anything

The currency in Venezuela has less buying power every day. People are weighing bricks of paper money that they carry around in wheelbarrows. The people who don’t have enough cash can’t buy food. So they loot it. And those who do have enough may discover that food shortages have left grocery shelves empty. And delivery trucks get mobbed by crowds of thousands of hungry families. Now food is being delivered in armored cars with military escorts in Venezuelan cities. But the food shortages have continued.

People in Venezuela have resorted to eating wild dogs, cats, and pigeons. Women are selling their hair to wig companies for some extra cash. And many armed militias have taken to the streets to restore or disrupt the peace.

How fast would your neighbors gang up to “redistribute” the food in your pantry if grocery shelves haven’t been stocked in a week? We’ve already seen how the riot police in our own cities have allowed “protesters” to loot grocery stores, service stations, electronics stores, and even auto parts stores to let them “get it out of their system.” That’s nice of them, if it isn’t your neighborhood or your store.

3. Money Isn’t The Answer To Everything

As in Venezuela, any major turmoil will usually see a black market develop. And it’s not always money that people want. Trading your skills and goods can get you further than money in hard times. If your country is struck by hyperinflation, paying your plumber with some canned goods may be more beneficial than a brick of paper money if there’s no store to spend it at and no goods to spend it on.

Some people stockpile silver and gold in case paper money becomes worthless. I buy it as part of my investor portfolio, but don’t ask how well that’s worked out. They even make credit card-sized slices of gold that can be broken down into 1 gram squares so you can make change in a barter economy. If an economic collapse has ruined the faith of your currency then having precious metals to trade could be valuable, provided the people you trade with would accept it. After all, you can’t eat gold and silver.

The Historical Answer To Economic Turmoil

An economic collapse is usually a long and drawn out process. Stockpiling food can help but isn’t always the answer if there’s going to be food shortages at the supermarkets for the next year. You will run out of stock eventually. And no one wants to turn their guest bedroom into a small grocery store.

Basic human needs haven’t changed since we were cavemen. After air we need shelter from the environment. I’ll just guess that no one reading this is homeless. Then comes water. Once again, I assume you have indoor plumbing. Then it’s food. Hungry people have brought down empires. Some smart people have theorized that every significant regime change in history was brought about by food shortages more than any other factor. Food shortages have been attributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and more recently attributed to the Arab Spring movement.

If the economy experiences a major disruption, like the next great depression, having a reliable food source is the most important factor. Considering you still have shelter and running water, that is. Growing a few plants in your home is a good start. Even if you don’t have a lot of space. You can buy dwarf fruit trees that you can grow on your counter top. Or a few potted plants for vegetables if you have the room for it. Growing a few plants can be a fun hobby and livens up your place, too. And it makes a great contingency in the event of economic trouble. You may not be growing enough to be self-sufficient, but if signs point to trouble coming, you could always add more plants. And having some experience in it before trouble hits would be ideal.

Dwarf fruit trees can be grown indoors and provide a healthy addition to your food supplies

Another thing to consider is cooking food from scratch. It will be easier to get your hands on bags of flour and the like instead of foods already prepared when the people make a run on the grocery stores. Even Roosh has taken the Bread Pill and makes his bread from scratch. In economic hardships it will become cheaper to make food from scratch, and easier to acquire in a rush.

Knowing food is key to keeping people out of the streets demanding revolution, Venezuela has decreed a massive farming operation and created bylaws to force people to the fields involuntarily for up to 60 days, or indefinitely, to grow that food. That gets them out of the streets I suppose.

Conclusion

You might be thinking, learn to garden? Learn how to cook? This sounds like something that should be posted on Return of Queens, not here. Like I’ve said before, men shouldn’t be dependent on anyone else. Especially not government handouts. What would happen if a major economic disaster happened and everyone was fine because they had a couple weeks of food to fall back on? And if independence can be had by taking a few easy steps and being a little more self-sufficient then we should all take those steps.

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163 Responses

Poor people should focus on stocking up as best they can on the food, water, and essential supplies that would see them through a crisis. Rich people should also have a stash of the basics, and on top of that have some real money available if things get bad enough.

True. The government tends to make things worse, yet people continually demand it. I think similar conditions are headed our way here in the U.S. (hopefully not quite as bad).

Strength, confidence, and self sufficiency help. Also, it helps to be prepared in multiple ways. I have a fairly large yard, and grow a big vegetable garden. We’ve got fruit trees, grape vines, chckens, berry bushes, etc. We eat from the garden year around. We have a deep pantry, and store quite a bit of food. I’ve also taken up weightlifting, jump rope, and biking, to get stronger and leaner.

On the financial side, we have a healthy emergency fund of cash, plus some gold and silver (mainly one ounce silver rounds, and pre 1964 silver coins). Of course we’ve got the 401k type investments too, in case things actually hold together. Plus the house is paid off.

Power wise – a couple inverters to get usable electricity from the cars, some extra gasoline, extra propane, and firewood.

Defensive tools like rifles, shotguns, pistols, revolvers, and a stash of ammo for all of them help protect everything else (plus a CCW for concealed carry).

Friends and family live nearby, but I’m also hoping to develop closer relationships with the people in the neighborhood.

Harding and Coolidge presided over some big economic shocks. Their policy: tell the people to tighten their belts and struggle through it. Even though those market crashes were bigger than the ’08 housing crash, they were back to normal in a few months.

You’d be surprised how hard it was to find that information. None of my many textbooks even mentioned them.

The governments must only perform those functions that are outside the scope of the private actors (highway networks, armies, border controls, common use infrastructure like water/electricity, measurement units standardization, rule of law). Those functions don’t include trying to be your father/mother and your family when you are old/sick or unemployed. Such a luxury is just the result of the accumulated wealth, wealth created by the blood and sweat of our ancestors and dilapidated by our current governments, thus wasting money today and selling the collective future…

Thanks for the tip.
I befriended a Brazilian dude recently as well and he’s got such a warm and loving personality. He’s got zero game but has a hot Brazilian girlfriend waiting for him back home. Needless to say he doesn’t understand my jaded Toronto demeanor.
Besides the government problems I could really see myself having a good time in South America.

Working two jobs while full-time student my life is pretty lame atm tbh.
This summer I’m going to finally cut loose a bit though. Grinding to get out of academia, and potentially out of the country.
I’ve got some money in the bank and am breaking even with school right now so once I’m done in the next few months I’m fucking done. My program has been paying off though so far so I’m happy about that.
Thanks for asking HC.

Americans are funny, you come up with some amazing shit, lead the world in so many ways, but incredibly ignorant of your own country’s ability to fuck you and anyone else.

One of your own guy’s, who some would have heard of (now dead) Aaron Russo, has been banging on for years about this, put out a movie giving some real credible insight into what’s really going on in your country and around the world.

Just a thought: Since this is a full blown, actual crisis for Venezuela I wonder how the data can be compared against the Syrian “crisis” Europe is facing. For example, in an actual crisis we have 300K people who display the desperation needed to cross into a neighboring country, compared to X amount of people in Europe. Adjustments made for total population numbers likely being different for Syria vs. Venezuela, etc. I’m willing to bet the numbers will be another way to tell the true story of the Muslim invasion of Europe being masked as a “refugee crisis” . Other examples would be X percentage of women/children/men in Venezuela vs. Y in Syria. Available food data, etc.

Due to Europe’s sadly cucked state right now, how much any revelations that kind of data would provide actually mattering , as far as inspiring change, is another subject.

Since the Venezuela situation is a legit crisis, I wonder how the data from it would stack up against further revealing the Muslim invasion of Europe for what it is. For example, X ratio of men/women/children from the 300K compared to Y ratio in Europe. Numbers would have to be adjusted for comparison based on populations for Venezuela and Syria, but I’m willing to bet the results would be telling. Comparison for number of terrorist attacks, number of cultural demands against the host nation, number of rapes, amount of government assistance, etc.

In economic situations like this, it is almost always good to stock up on some desired commodity. Silver and gold are not necessarily the best things as poor people don’t want to by wafers of precious metals unless they’re smelters and goldsmiths or have some connections that needs it.

Case in point: my current girlfriend is from Taijikistan. During the post-Soviet collapse and the ensuing civil war, her father (who’s a carpenter and lumberjack), quickly acquired a forested area, hired a few goons, cut some trees and traded in firewood. Since almost every family in the area needed firewood to stay warm, they offered him their money and services in exchange for his firewood. He even paid his workers in said firewood.

Gold became a monetary metal because not everyone wants firewood. Barter at that level requires putting the people with each others wants together. Gold solves this problem. Unlike other commodities it doesn’t expire and is sufficiently rare hence it’s rise to being the intermediate form.

Gold will certainly have a place in any prolonged economic collapse.

Also, if firewood is good why not have the chainsaws or the gas to run them?

Gold is good for storing and/or transporting large amounts of wealth. It’s high value to weight ratio is good you have to grab your money and run. Historically silver has been preferable for most normal financial transactions. Historically, a silver dime has been worth about a loaf of bread, and a silver quarter a gallon of gasoline. Gold is better for things like buying property. I keep a bit of gold and silver, but mainly silver.

If nobody wants your gold, it’s worth nothing. To take my post-Soviet Taijikistan example, very few people had enough money to afford gold and probably didn’t either need or want it. Given they all had woodfire stoves, firewood was a precious commodity.

Sure, but it’s a stone cold bitch to carry a cord of wood in your wallet. But if everyone knows that the firewood guy will sell a cord of firewood for 20oz of silver, than an ounce of silver is worth 1/20 a cord of wood, and even if you don’t want silver or wood, you’ll accept them in payment for other things.

There is a time and place for everything. In the situation you mentioned, firewood worked great. Everything has pluses and minuses. Firewood is heavy and bulky. I bought a cord recently, and hauled it around my house and stacked it by hand. I can tell you it is heavy.

Gold has a lot of value (most of the time) in a small light package. I’m not really a gold bug. It is just he very small piece of the preparedness pie.

I wholeheartedly agree on the importance of stocking the precious metals, though I disagree on the details. I prefer the safety of steel, brass, and lead. I find it’s difficult to digest silver and gold–hard on the stomach. With the proper application of the three metals I named, you won’t go hungry.

I believe the Long Slow Bleed will continue for a long time. Collapse has been predicted for forty years now and it hasn’t happened. But the Long Slow Bleed continues. The end result, of course, is the same.

I don’t understand the compensation tilt on guys knowing how to cook. Men have always made their food sometime or another since we got past being apes. As we all know, pussy is never truly reliable with anything.

A man will share his winnings for the good of our species; a woman won’t unless there’s headache attached to it.

Keeping things like cooking and sewing women’s work, shaming men for doing them, I think may be another social control mechanism. These have been necessary skills for thousands of years but if men learn them then they might not marry.

I grow a lot of potatoes. They are versatile and store well. I had garden potatoes and eggs from my chickens for breakfast today. Winters squash (like butternut) are also nutritious, easy to grow, and store well.

I store winter squash in the basement, and potatoes in a buried trashcan/improvised “root cellar”.

Top-down socialism is a fucking disaster. Undoubtedly. I’ve never worked for a company that could efficiently predict and plan its financial activity, so how an entire nation could with its near-infinite complexity could is beyond me completely.

But we need to be careful that this argument doesn’t spill into undermining society as a whole.

There are people in your country, your town, your neighbourhood who need help.

We forget that, we forget ourselves.

If you can spare a few dollar so someone can buy something to eat at Christmas, do so! Even if for selfish reasons, it will make you feel good!

It was for a reason why the Communists went after the kulaks.
It is for a reason that under ISIS, two type of people are living some life resembling normalcy: those who have land to farm, and those who have animals on their farm. Everybody else is fucked.

there were beautiful women in Venezuela. probably acting polite, and respectful to the uber men feeding them.

When it happens here I shall gather an army of Victoria’s Secret Models, and use them as furniture. Unless they gain an extra pound or two, then its demotion to the Flintstones car…peddle me around to find more…

Hoover was a big time interventionist. His interventions are what caused the great depression. FDR then prolonged it. See Rothbard’s book on the great depression. Although any proper history will cover Hoover’s interventionist mindset and actions. The previous depression in the early 20s the then president didn’t let Hoover do anything. Hence that depression was short lived and largely forgotten.

Rothbard is meh. Anarcho-capitalism is a delusional fantasy that excludes the possibility of people replacing hierarchies with new ones and takes a ridiculously high view of market pressures (which, ironically, are always framed in terms of economics and not social dynamocs).

We may disagree but in this you are right, IMHO. Libertarians seem to think human nature is good and malleable and don’t seem to understand that man is not a rational animal but a rationalizing one and we are inclined to do shortsighted and stupid things even if in the long term they are harmful.

Libertarians are also in denial of religious, ethnic and ideological differences and assume “all men are islands”. They also seem to deny that lower taxes means greater income disparity, and that a billionaire doesn’t spend as much of his/her income than an average joe worker.

Then again, they do point out much the government (and the Federal Reserve) engages in (((cronyism))) and (((economic manipulation))) on behalf of (((Wall Street))).

Lower taxes mean more opportunities. Higher taxes only reduce “income disparity” by making everyone poorer and subsidizing entire classes of people harming the most productive ones. NO wonder why taxes are so high even though infrastructure and defense (the real tasks of the government) have been abandoned (failing infrastructure in the U.S., inexistent defense capabilities in most of Europe…).

Hoover did exactly what you aren’t supposed to do in a depression, namely whack up taxes, which leaves businesses (and people) with less disposable capital to invest and people with less money to spend on goods. Even Keynes, the darling of interventionists, advised against that and constantly kept bothering Hoover about it.

Despite my hatred of FDR for his fascist sympathies and his cronyism, the New Deal did get many jobs on track and fixed what Hoover did wrong. He could’ve done it better (namely not have the excessive printing of money in the 20’s), but he still got us out. WWII was just the icing on the cake, so much so that conspiracy theorists oftentimes blame FDR for provoking the Japanese.

The new deal prolonged the depression and created the fascist economy we still live with today. I even directly paid the cost of FDR’s policies today when I bought raisins. The federal government is still limiting the supply of raisins to increase prices. It was one of many interventions prop up food prices that created misery for many americans. It probably even killed some.

Not really. The Roosevelt recession was irrelevant as FDR had managed to get the economy on track. Unemployment had gotten lower and lower for three/four years since Roosevelt took office, which is definitely improvment.

The Great Depression was a study in the fact that there are many ways to get out of a depression. Sweden got out quickly by doing a welfare state, whereas France did so by staying on the gold standard and practicing the fiscal responsability Austrian school economists love. They didn’t even go into recession until 1931.

I’m well aware of the standard history, thank you. The fact remains that interventionism prolonged the bad times. Sure there are going to be some temporary effects from treating symptoms. That’s what drugs are for and that’s what government intervention amounts to. The fact that patient had a brief improvement in symptoms doesn’t mean that it was the right course of action. The healing finally came when the government finally backed off its interventions after the war.

And yes, FDR practiced fascist economics. It was trendy at the time and those policies were praised by the leading fascists of the era as such.

Now the ground work that caused the great depression comes from creating the fed and using it to fund WW1 along with other monetary practices through the 20s. The USA has been economically practicing the medicine of Elvis’s doctor for over a century now. But we see how taking more drugs to treat the symptoms of the drugs currently being used worked out for Elvis.

Today we now have interventions to juice the numbers that define a good economy. The symptoms are addressed but the underlying problems go uncorrected.

The old just the right people argument.
When it works, it works briefly. Usually out of dumb luck.
Look at decisions being made by just the right people in Sweden today. Here’s some immigrants for you to support.

I didn’t say they were equal. I pointed out the fact the “just the right people” model is seriously flawed. Their leadership runs a welfare state and are importing a third world population that is incompatible with Swedish society. An interventionist state will make these sort of errors. For every good decision they make you’ll get several bad ones. Even the good ones will be bad for many.

The notion of an interventionist state rests on the idea that small group has the knowledge and ability to determine what is best for everyone and then puts aside their personal benefit to act on it. It’s simply not possible for such a small group to have those abilities. Through dumb luck they might get a decision correct here and there but that’s all it is, dumb luck.

Excellent article.
Remember that this is not an isolated case, but part of a Bolivarian Marxist movement led by Cuba and sponsored by Brazil, called Forum of São Paulo.
It destroyed Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua and many other countries, while Obama laughed and didn’t do a thing to oppose it.
Huge corruption, the people starving while bankers had record profits and party militants became rich.
Brazil has lost 8℅ GDP in two years. A whole generation destroyed.

I don’t know much about the political working of Brazil other than hearing about corruption but, with Brazil’s size and natural resources I have always wondered why it isn’t an economic powerhouse. It definitely has the potential.

A few minutes ago I saw a commercial on TNT with Martin Sheen and a bunch of other commie actors I couldn’t name that starts out saying ” republican members of the electoral college, this message is for you”. They basically say the electorates should ” vote their conscience” and vote against Trump,brought to you by Unite For America, WTF is this? They have TV commercials attempting to persuade the electorate to vote opposite of the election? What the hell happened to “accept the election results”? I don’t think those fucktard lefists understand the shit storm that would set off in this country if the electorate voted in Hillary Clinton.

Now, back to the article, is it just me or has no one else noticed how little news coverage there is of the present situation in Venezuela but, when Danny Glover and Spicoli were going there praising Chavez they couldn’t get enough of that?

Speaking of artificially low interest rates, it seems to me that it mostly only benefits the really rich. Instead of putting their millions in CDs or other interest bearing savings they pour it into the stock market or buy larger tracts of land as investments. Now, I suppose this helps the general economy by propping up the stock market but, it looks to me that it hurts regular wage earners who would probably be better off having their money in interest bearing savings (3-5%+) because about the only way the stock market is available to them is by investing in mutual funds as they certainly can’t afford to regularly buy/sell/trade large amounts of stocks on their own and damn sure can’t afford large tracts of farm/forest lands for long term investments.
The little guy is always taking it up the tail pipe.

People just don’t get it because they refuse to believe in the supernatural, the spiritual. “Socialism” and “Communism” is not just a “failed social experiment”. It is a creation of Satan himself of whom can spiritually impose in the physical realm with the help of his jewish disciples of today. Socialism is taking from someone and giving to another making it appear that it’s “fair” or “compassionate” when in reality it is literally thievery and the recipients involved are participating in thievery whether they realize it or not. Controlling the flow of capital is what the elites desire so that they can keep most of it and redistribute what’s left to the bottomfeeders of the country.

And Judas said “Why did you just waste a bottle of perfume? That could have been sold and given to the poor!!”. Gee, who knew better than Judas of what to do with what belonged to someone else. It was the woman’s perfume, it belonged to her, and if she wanted to break it open and use all of it on Jesus, it was her business to do so. Judas was a thief and in his mind it was ok to take what belonged to someone else and redistribute it. This story in the bible is of Judas of whom was the first communist. Satan is acting in the spirit of Judas by imposing communism upon any society that can be brainwashed into accepting it.

I would hope one thing people get from this and other examples around the world…we are not immune, we are not an exception, this isn’t the kind of thing that only happens somewhere else.

Everyone can only do the best they can, what they think is right. This stuff is forthright chilling for me. Take the warnings and whatever time serious. We are lucky being spectators. India wasn’t so lucky, overnight that curveball hit. Cyprus bail in and capital controls. Endless examples.

You aren’t mentioning that the Saudis dumping too much oil on the global economy, was a deliberate Wall Street agenda to target Venezuela, which was earmarked for regime change. It also doesn’t ention tha Wall Street financiers have massive stockpiles of medical supplies and food in Venezuela, which is being kept off the market to create artificial scarcity. This has nothing to do with socialism, and everything to do with regime change so Wall Street can take control of Venezuelas oil. http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-led-economic-war-not-socialism-is-tearing-venezuela-apart/5535633

The reason behind Venezuela’s almost complete reliance on oil is the deliberate destruction of its own industries by its government. Venezuelan economy had a low degree of diversification in the past, but the Chavez regime just made things worse.

As for “The Bread Pill” I gotta admit from firsthand experience that this is something every guy should try. Even with “higher end” bread ingredients such as specialty flours, the bread you make STILL comes out cheaper than the stuff you get at the store.

Be prepared just in case.
Have a food stock and don’t tell anyone that you have.
Know how to grow food and have land to grow it on – but be prepared to defend it if you can.
Stock up on medical supplies and barter items.
Live a healthy lifestyle and be in good shape.
Have genuinely useful skills – such as making or fixing stuff.

solid advise.
As much as I am incensed by the radical bigoted SJW men/women of the world, most real men I meet/know are aware; and have at least basic provisions.
Women? never. And they don’t need to. Can always live for the moment, and attach to strongest man…

example:
After living in Thailand for several months, I returned to NYC. Some “girlfriends” living in Phuket, texted me for advise as they heard of another earthquake. why me? I don’t know. But, they were scared.
Anyway I quickly researched on-line. how long last one took to get there, etc.
I knew they were living in solid concrete building — safely above sea level.
So, asked ” you have few days of water/food like I told you?”
The response:
“55555555555, tingtong falang”

Things would be different for Venezuela if it had been a Portugese colony. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divvied up the western hemisphere into pre agreed upon territories for Spain and Portugal to settle. Venezuela was a coin toss. If only they knew there was oil. Portugal put its entire male force into colonizing and was more successful abroad but suffered ‘man drain’ domestically. Portugese women especially in the cities then took African slaves from the market as domestic helpers and pets. Lisbon women of the period were known for always having their slave servants accompanying them in public, carrying bags and so on. The Portugese men were all checked out abroad colonizing.

The Spanish were into missions and converting in the Americas primarily whereas the Portugese were all over the globe, east India, China, Africa. The Portugese would have gotten indigenous tribes to war and procure slaves, thence loading them onto the boats and off to trading ports elsewhere, making quicker inroads with their trade language of Portugese and twofold partially liquidating the territory for Portugese settlement. The portugese were more plugged in economically and globally. Brizil today is a much more civil and liveable place than Venezuela.

….”From Korea, Russia, Africa, to Latin America, it has never worked”.

From your opening remark, i will state this article is complete and utter Rubbish.

Most countries are Liberal socialist democracies, particularly in Europe. Korea & Russia were communist & Africa and south america have been the direct consequence of unchecked capitalist greed. Those countries have massive problems with rebels, drug cartels and The US government has always played its part in the dysfunction of South American and African countries. Not to mention the culture of these people for hundreds of years has been dog eat dog.

I would argue that if these nations were wealthy enough to implement social programs, they would function much better.

Without socialism there wouldn’t be any public schools, hospitals ….. socialism allows the extremely poor and disadvantaged an income so these people dont have to Rob you at gun point, break into your homes and steal your vehicles to make a living (which is much of the problem that is seen in your black communities in the US).
You lost me when you mentioned socialism.

The “Liberal socialist democracies” you are probably referring to are actually Welfare States – free markets with high taxes to redistribute wealth. And Venezuela had tons of oil wealth to pull from. How much more rich does a country need to be for socialism to work there?

I would argue that Venezuela was never a democratic liberal socialist nation. It is a highly corrupt nation where any wealth is exploited by foreign companies via the corrupt government’s if not cartels of some kind. People are dirt poor. It is a perfect example of poor governance in a purely capitalistic society. Its closer to Anarchism, where small communities fend for themselves.

Not having been there i cant be certain, but this is not a country where a stable government has ever thrived. And i believe that is exactly how the capitalists like it, destabilize and plunder.

Alot of this stuff comes down to culture. As my uncle said to me once “Every black country on earth is fucked..”

So tell me, God. What gives a group of people the moral high ground to rob other people of money that they came by through voluntary trade? Just so we are clear on your thinking, when is robbery justified?

“And Venezuela had tons of oil wealth to pull from.” And you just quantified the whole problem with the Venezuelan economy. They HAD the wealth from petroleum, but petroleum is now cheaper than it has been in a lifetime…

The problem goes beyond that. Petroleum is only wealth when its processed and sold at a good price. Moreover Venezuelan economy has become an afterthought of the Oil industry, there is no economic diversification at all hence complete dependence on the oil income. For Venezuela, oil has become a bane…

Agreed. And both Ludwig von Mises and Hayek explained in their books why socialism must always fail; it has no price system. To make economic decisions you need to have prices that actually mean something. But when governments take over all economic decision making you eliminate supply and demand forces from the economy. With no supply and demand, prices cease to carry useful information about the availability of resources. The result is economic chaos.

Socialism can only “work” (for a short period) when you are rich, otherwise it fails, “God”, the same way being a rich junkie can “work” for a short time…dilapidating and laying waste to the legacy of your forefathers until you have nothing. Socialism a la European is just wasting all your wealth today and leave the bills to your children and grandchildren.

Africa and south america have been the direct consequence of unchecked capitalist greed. Those countries have massive problems with rebels, drug cartels and The US government has always played its part in the dysfunction of South American and African countries. Not to mention the culture of these people for hundreds of years has been dog eat dog.

Thank you for showing us your ignorance and your idiocy. In Africa the rule of law (one of the pillars of capitalism) is a fantasy and so it’s in most of Latin America where after Independence, in most countries just a couple of families grabbed everything they could and set up their countries to run like their personal haciendas where the rule of law is a fantasy and shitty education along with criminality and constant inflation is used as a tool to keep the people in check. It’s true that the U.S. is responsible for most of the current dysfunctional regimes in the area, however they did a couple of things right (Pinochet) in order to further their interests and thwart communist expansion. Believe me, Venezuelans would be better off had the CIA taken care of Chavez and his people. All in all the main responsible parties for the situation down there are the elites of those countries.

Why are you making this personal? i work for a living buddy, but i am also not willing to work with out rights that provide me with protections that come from living in a country
that doesn’t allow me to starve if i get sick or cant work for whatever reason. It is VERY rare that wealth is created by people who dont already come from wealthy families.

The only difference I see between Castro & Pinochet is their relationship with the U.S.

I didn’t make that personal, I just asked a question. Most leftists claim to love socialism and that communism isn’t that bad, criticizing the economic system of the countries they live in, however most of them wouldn’t even dare to venture out of their posh neighborhoods, let alone travel to a country that implements the system they claim to support.

Moreover the wealth of the western countries wasn’t created even in this century, it took hundreds of years of toil and work for something so good to come to fruition. That wealth is what allows your government to take the place formerly occupied by your family in order to “take care of you” during sickness or unemployment.

It is VERY rare that wealth is created by people who dont already come from wealthy families.

Wealth is not what is in the bank, the cash, or in jewels and precious metals like gold, they are just medium of exchange, units of measurement of wealth but not the wealth itself. Not even raw natural resources are wealth, not without processing. Wealth is work, or should I say the result of work. Tangible and intangible. Whether is your laptop, the clothes you use, processed iron, electricity, bridges or the accumulated knowledge that you use today to solve problems and which you probably generate in order to improve and solve ever more complex problems. The building of many of those things are not the province of the über rich or the current elites.

The only difference I see between Castro & Pinochet is the relationship with the U.S.

And the fact that one left voluntarily an ordered country, with problems, but where the rule of law, efficiency and high economic growth were present, vs the other who died without abandoning the power and left an stagnant, poorer and defeated country, where millions of its best men left and where the rule of law and freedom are fantasy is of no importance I guess…

The wealth you are talking about basically came from slavery. Even today, the capitalists/or those that are wealthy move their productions to poor countries to increase profits.

anyway, this is relatively pointless, all im saying is there needs to be balance and without socialism and unions and government regulation it leaves industry or atleast the workers open to exploitation.

The Great Depression was Caused by the somewhat recently installed FED. They squeezed the liquidity out of the country until the rich could buy it for nothing. Talking to people I know in venezuela..and they say the same.

There IS an example of socialism that worked. The thing is, people who claim to be socialists usually hate it. I’m thinking about National Socialist Germany.

Before Hitler came to power, Germany was suffering under a globalized, free-market economy: a handful of (((merchants))) were importing cheap goods from Asia, South America… and used their wealth to pay for degenerate art and whores whereas many workers had no job left. If this reminds you our current situation, that’s a feature, not a bug.

After the NS came to power, Germany went through a real economic miracle. Government closed the importations, had the factories and companies opening again so that people could work. Food was under rationing but no one starved, basic commodities were ensured, family life was restored, jobs were present and children were financially taken care of by the government. Only the (((merchants))) could dislike the new situation.

National Socialism worked with a population of disciplined, motivated, competent Germans, willing to get the shit done under the stern but benevolent distribution of social engineers. Germans believed in the interest of their Volk and had what it took to do the work. You won’t get that if everyone thinks of his own interests first or if people are dumb, lazy and so on. Bring back homogeneous societies, bring back the sense of Volk, trust people with at least a decent character and you’ll get a socialism that works.

You see variations of that all over Europe. It works for a short time, but is unsustainable in the long run. It always turns into a Tragedy of the Commons. Nazi Germany ended up with a much freer market because Hitler was smart enough to grasp that economic fascism wasn’t sustainable.

Before Hitler came to power, Germany was suffering under a globalized, free-market economy: a handful of (((merchants))) were importing cheap goods from Asia, South America… and used their wealth to pay for degenerate art and whores whereas many workers had no job left. If this reminds you our current situation, that’s a feature, not a bug.

That was a satyre right?

National Socialism worked with a population of disciplined, motivated, competent Germans, willing to get the shit done under the stern but benevolent distribution of social engineers. Germans believed in the interest of their Volk and had what it took to do the work. You won’t get that if everyone thinks of his own interests first or if people are dumb, lazy and so on. Bring back homogeneous societies, bring back the sense of Volk, trust people with at least a decent character and you’ll get a socialism that works.

Hitler’s economic policy worked because wealth !=money. As simple as that, so simple that idiot who later went on to destroy his own people could grasp. The wealth of a nation is not to be found in its central banks, in its safes or anything like that. Not even in its natural resources. The wealth of a nation is to be found in its people and its abilities, aptitudes and knowledge, things accumulated through generations of grinding trial and error. Basically wealth is the result of work. Moreover der Führer understood the necessity of salaries, at least at first. No, it wasn’t a welfare society like ours, but it was unsustainable in time.

Some decent info here, each point seems to address a symptom instead of a cause:
1) These South American leaders do not want socialism, they want wealth and power. And marxism (“everyone is more important than me”) has been their preferred tool. The people just want a roof and 3 squares. NATIONAL socialism on the other hand, perfect track record, but these bankers…
2) Might be better stated, hungry people will do MOST things, including loot and murder. What they will rarely do is confront the govt that has brainwashed them into believing that they are “all in this together”.
3) Money, as you say, might not be the answer to everything, but it has been the preferred medium of separating people from their free will for centuries. If you control the money, as a famous (((banker))) once said, it doesn’t matter who makes the laws.

I’d be interested to see a data comparison between Venezuela and Syria. Taking into consideration adjustments for the population size, a comparison could be done for an actual refugee crisis in Venezuela verses a “refugee crisis” out of Syria, which most people understand is a Muslim invasion in disguise. For example, the ratio out of the 300K from Venezuela that are men/women/children vs. Syria. The number of total refugees based on their need compared. The number of terrorist attacks, murders, rapes, and political/cultural demands against the host country by the refugees. There’s a lot of data that could be compared to this end.

Herbert Hoover interfered with money and markets, and interjected public spending as a method to fight the recession of 1930…Coolidge, his predecessor was adamant that government should not interfere and spend money to “help” people hurt via poor economics of central bankers, or natural disasters. Hoover felt otherwise. Along with Democrats they helped usher in a deeper recession, and led to FDR’s depression. Your statement regarding Hoover is incorrect. I stopped reading from that point. Essentially, both Hoover and FDR moved the nation toward socialism, especially after Coolidge’s years of anti-Wilson economics, which worked.

I’ve lived in the Chavez’s dream my whole life and let me tell you it sucks more than the american lifestyle that has many flaws. Thankfully my parents always provided food and a lifestyle that most americans won’t have. Me or my family will never make a line for food unless it’s a live-or-die choice. Since the first day of this facist regime my parents were chased by the goverment for not suporting chavez in 2002 as they were in the highest positions of national oil industry at that time, they lost their jobs. But there are many elements that aren’t being taken into account in the venezuelan situation. This is not socialism, in fact, socialism has never existed, it’s just only a mean to an end. And the end of these guys today is making corruption something legal, filling their pockets while fucking a whole country. One thing that happens here is the result of the values we have as society, the phenomenom of “Los enchufados” (The pluged ones). People that support the goverment for personal economic reasons, people that can pay someone in the goverment to award a contract in one of the few shitty projects that they make and making fake budgets. People who support a drug lord as mayor or senator in the promise that someday you will be like them as the 90% live in mental and material poverty. And then the people below them that admires them for having a luxury life knowing that it is not hard earned money. It’s a speech of resentment that can make a whole country go dumb, because the poor ones are poor due the “Rich man, but not the rich ones in the goverment of course, has their money”. But the reality is that chavez didn’t do anything he took the public health system and collapsed it, he didn’t built any new big hospital we don’t have remedies or medical tools for interventions. Meanwhile the population grew in 20 years. He took the road system and now they’re full of holes, traffic and many other dangers. He expropiated a lot of lands from farmers (Like 50% of the lands that produces food in Texas in a country of the size of Texas), and now there is a shortage of food, in a tropical country where we don’t have winter and we can haverst high quality food to export at any time of the year. He took the oil industry while the middle east war was happening, great oil prices for us, and that was the reason he had money to buy many people years before the prices declined and the system that worked before couldn’t even start because it was so destroyed and we couldn’t afford buying the 90% of the food we eat on foreing countries like they did for many years. A GOVERMENT CAN’T RUN THE INDSUTRIAL-COMERCIAL WORLD they’re polticians not scientists or engineers. But i love my country for many other things, and this apocalypsis has made me apreciate the what’s really happening. It’s not Venezuela or US that isn’t cool anymore, it’s the whole world. And the reason behind this worldwide disaster we witness in every article here is that the human race is dumb. Yeah few of us has critical thinking but we aren’t even the 1% of the population. We are living in the instagram-era where 15 years old girls know how to show their tits and asses for camera, we live in a plastic world. I remember talking to the father of my best GF, he was a comunist back in the day when being comunist was the cool thing. He is 80 years old and he says dying will be cool because life is so boring now with technolgy. Analyzing what he said he is right, we are the generation without a berlin wall, no purpose in life more than achieving fame because media told us it will get us sex or money clowning ourselves, because smart is nerd. Fuck, the other day i heard a comedian in the radio that said all his problems ended the day he cut off his dick, and thinkg about it he was right. You reading this, go out, see the people now, with their faces sticked in their smartphones like dumbs 24/7. I won’t deny you that internet it’s the best but at the same time the worst thing that could happen to us. It’s like we are losing our souls. The greeks were very smart discovering democracy and rejecting totalitarism but it is not perfect the choice and the will of the masses because masses are stupid. Look at us, voting for a temporal king, clowns in television doing campaing, here in venezuela, in the united states of america or in norway. I thank God for being born before the internet because i can see past the “obvious”. I hope i could write and article of all this shit i’m talking here explained better.

Great insight. However you got something wrong in my opinion. Communism (Socialism is just the slow motion version of it) is a means to an end, a very clear one: The concentration of the national wealth in a cadre and a few well connected individuals (o enchufados como dicen en sus país), leaving the rest with scraps and keeping the system in some sort of stasis, where progress is anathema.

A correction.
Hoover was an interventionist with both higher government spending and the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Of course these did not work but the narrative was that Hoover didn’t interfere enough. Roosevelt spent enormous amounts of money and a second Wall Street crash occurred in 1937.

Calvin Coolidge had a deeper stock Market crash than the 1929 one and by doing nothing had recovered in short order.

The Forgotten Man is an excellent work on the subject.

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